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From silent shades 'Bess of Bedlam', Z370

Introduction

Purcell’s setting of the mad-song Bess of Bedlam probably dates from around 1682. The song was widely distributed (at least ten contemporary or near-contemporary manuscript copies survive) and was printed in both the fourth book of Choice Ayres (1683) and in Orpheus Britannicus. Purcell’s handling of the mood changes is masterly. In only a hundred bars of music there are twelve sections and as many changes of metre, and yet within the deliberate craziness of the song there is a striking progression to Bess’s schizophrenic twists and contradictions.

At the opening she sadly mourns in ‘lovesick melancholy’, the melody plangently harmonized. Her first mad episode takes us to the kingdom of the fairies, halted just as rapidly at the gentle triple metre of ‘In yonder cowslip’ (which still maintains parallels with Shakespeare, now switched from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Ariel’s song in The Tempest). The lilting metre is briefly interrupted by a return to semi-recitative (‘For since my love is dead’) but is soon restored at Bess’s self-pitying ‘Poor Bess for his sake’: her desolate ‘groan’ leads to the marvellously lugubrious ‘I’ll lay me down and die’, with its list of nocturnal animals, so unsuited to ‘warble forth my elegy’. Pure madness dashes by in the gabble of ‘Did you not see my love’, as rapidly replaced by the triple time of ‘Ladies, beware ye’ and the mythological imagery of Charon and the Furies. A moment of relative sanity returns in the lilting ordinariness of ‘Poor Bess will return’, but the embittered chromaticism of ‘Cold and hungry am I grown’ leads into another brief flight of fantasy: she will feed upon the food of the gods. The final stanzas are more profound; those who are content do ‘all sorrow prevent’ and Bess is, so long as she is ‘free from the law’, in her thoughts ‘as great as a King’.

Details

From silent shades, and the Elysian groves, Where sad departed spirits mourn their loves; From crystal streams, and from that country where Jove crowns the fields with flowers all the year, Poor senseless Bess, cloth’d in her rags and folly, Is come to cure her lovesick melancholy. Bright Cynthia kept her revels late, While Mab, the Fairy Queen, did dance, And Oberon did sit in state When Mars at Venus ran his lance. In yonder cowslip lies my dear, Entomb’d in liquid gems of dew; Each day I’ll water it with a tear, Its fading blossom to renew. For since my love is dead and all my joys are gone, Poor Bess for his sake, A garland will make, My music shall be a groan. I’ll lay me down and die Within some hollow tree, The rav’n and cat, The owl and bat, Shall warble forth my elegy. Did you not see my love as he pass’d by you? His two flaming eyes, if he come nigh you, They will scorch up your hearts? Ladies, beware ye, Lest he should dart a glance that may ensnare ye. Hark! I hear old Charon bawl, His boat he will no longer stay; The Furies lash their whips and call, ‘Come, come away.’ Poor Bess will return to the place whence she came, Since the world is so mad she can hope for no cure; For love’s grown a bubble, a shadow, a name, Which fools do admire and wise men endure. Cold and hungry am I grown, Ambrosia will I feed upon, Drink nectar still and sing. Who is content Does all sorrow prevent, And Bess in her straw, Whilst free from the law, In her thoughts is as great as a King.